From being praised as a "divine masterpiece" to being accused of "full copy plagiarism", Audi's "Xiaoman" promotional short film takes only one day to overturn. The short film has been on the hot search for two consecutive days, alternating positive and negative, one chicken feather on the ground. On May 22, after the blogger "Beida man Ge" released a short video about Audi's promotional short film plagiarizing its copy, Audi quickly issued a statement saying that it apologized for the trouble caused to Mr. Andy Lau, Beida man Ge and relevant parties due to weak supervision and lax audit, and said it had been charged to the creative agency to deal with it.
Judging from Audi's statement, the plagiarism incident has been hammered, and the agency undertaking the short film is accountable. However, in this incident, whether the publisher (FAW Audi), agent (Shangsi advertising) and starring Andy Lau should bear the responsibility has become the focus of attention. Insiders believe that although the video production is based on the creative agency and Audi also indicated in the statement that it is handled by the agency, it is difficult for Audi, as a video publisher directly facing the public, to completely exempt from the infringement caused by the liability of the agent.
"Xiaoman" short film completely off the shelf
Back to May 21, Andy Lau's promotional short film "Xiaoman today, Xiaoman is good in life" cooperated with Audi brand burst on all platforms after it was launched, and the entry of "Andy Lau's popular science Xiaoman solar term" also quickly rushed to the hot search. Peng Yangjun, the director of the film, also posted a microblog saying, "this is the most relaxing and pleasant film I have ever directed... Thank all my partners and customers for the first draft.".
However, the "Xiaoman" after one draft caused big trouble a day later. On May 22, the blogger named "man ge of Peking University" released a short video and wrote "what experience is the copywriting that has been plagiarized for more than 100 million", pointing directly at the plagiarism of the full text of the video copywriting of Andy Lau and Audi brands. It is understood that the plagiarized video referred to by "brother man of Peking University" is the video about Xiaoman released on May 21 last year. At that time, its video likes exceeded 100000. By comparing the two copywriting sentence by sentence, it can be found that the Audi advertising text is the same as the above Xiaoman video. After the contrast video was sent out, it attracted many netizens.
According to the brief introduction of the short film, the agent of "Xiaoman" promotional short film is M & C Saatchi (Shangsi advertising), and the creativity of the agent is Zhang Hao. With the "Audi Xiaoman advertisement plagiarism" on the hot search, Audi's official microblog, wechat official account and other platforms have deleted relevant videos and issued a statement of apology. Audi said in a statement that "the video was submitted and implemented by creative agency M & C Saatchi. Based on the principle of not avoiding problems, we have instructed it to deal with the infringement of the involved copy as soon as possible and give a satisfactory reply to the public. At the same time, Audi's official channels will fully remove the video from the shelves before the facts are officially clarified".
It is understood that Shangsi advertising was jointly established by Charles sage and Morris sage in 1995 with Jeremy Sinclair and others. Its headquarters is located in London, UK. Customers of this brand in China include Byd Company Limited(002594) , Baojun automobile, Porsche, etc. In 2019, Shangsi advertising fell into personnel turmoil and financial fraud. Morris left with three senior executives, and the company's CEO, Executive Creative Director and chief strategy officer were also voluntarily dismissed one after another.
Insiders said that usually the creative advertising of enterprises will entrust a third-party agency to submit and produce the scheme, and the enterprise is responsible for reviewing and finalizing the release. Audi said in a statement that it would instruct M & C Saatchi to deal with the infringement of the involved documents as soon as possible, which is also the first responsible party.
After Audi apologized, Shangsi advertisement also issued a statement saying that our Audi service team is the Audi xiaomanpian brand video development team. In the process of video content development, due to the weak copyright awareness of the company's Audi service team, without communicating with the copyright owner, we directly used the Chinese content of the 'xiaomanpian' video of Tiktok blogger Beida man to Mr. Andy Lau, Beida man FAW Audi brand has brought great inconvenience and trouble. "We apologize and sincerely apologize to the original author. At the same time, we promise to do our best to make up for the loss to the original author. Our company solemnly promises to respect and protect the rights and interests of the original author in advertising creation and strictly prevent this from happening."
new media era brings new problems
Is Audi responsible for the trouble caused by Shangsi advertising?
The reporter of Beijing business daily noted that after the production of "Xiaoman" short film, Audi released it in its official channels and generated traffic. Although the video has been deleted, it has been fermented for a day.
"The video off the shelf just stops the continuous infringement, but the previous infringement already exists." Chen Wenming, director of Zhejiang Xiaode law firm, believes that if the advertisement misappropriates personal video content for commercial purposes, but the source and author are not marked on the content, it is an infringement in the copyright law. As the leading actor, Andy Lau only provides character images, and the video content, copy and release have nothing to do with it, so it will not involve corresponding responsibilities. As a publisher, Audi releases the video and uses it for commercial purposes. Although it is produced by Audi agents, the infringed can also sue the enterprise and make it bear the corresponding responsibility.
However, Chen Wenming also told the Beijing Business Daily that before reaching relevant cooperation, the enterprise and the entrusted company will sign relevant agreements and contracts, and the relevant provisions on copyright guarantee will usually be marked on the advertising production. If the infringed sues the enterprise, the enterprise can list the agent as a co defendant and jointly bear the responsibility. "If the incident has a slight adverse impact on the enterprise, the enterprise can also continue to sue the agency company to bear the corresponding losses."
For this plagiarism incident, a relevant person of FAW Audi said: "FAW Audi brand attaches great importance to originality and intellectual property protection. Behind every direct creative idea, there are countless days and nights of accumulation."
With the rise of new media and short video platforms, it is becoming more and more popular for individuals to publish works on public platforms, but this is not to provide convenience for plagiarists. Industry insiders said that the use of publicly published works for commercial purposes without the permission of the parties has touched the red line of the law. In the future, enterprises should strengthen management and audit to avoid such problems.
In fact, it is understood that advertising companies usually carry out copy checking procedures similar to those in papers when carrying out advertising creativity. However, a person in the advertising industry admitted that in the past, the duplicate checking results could be obtained only by searching the text copy, but the oral copy of the anchor in the video products did have difficulty in duplicate checking. In this regard, Cui Dongshu, Secretary General of the passenger car market information joint committee, said that in the new media era, a variety of work presentation forms such as short video and audio are produced, and it is difficult for enterprises to find the source of copywriting and creativity. They also need to go online to retrieve apps or platforms in the new media situation to solve this problem.
